Consider Running A Class Selfie Contest On Your Website During School Spirit Weeks

Homecoming is right around the corner here so staffs are planning for photo galleries, videos and coverage for everything from the yearbook to the newspaper. One things my staffs have done the last few years (and something I’ve seen many other staffs do) is host a spirit week class selfie contest. I like contests like these for a few reasons:

It’s a way to increase engagement on the site

If it’s early in the year, it’s a nice way to get the masses to the site for an annual relaunch

It’s fairly easy to do

You can see a template of how to go about it here: https://fhntoday.com/selfie-contest-2015/. The Google Form doesn’t exist on that page anymore, but you can see the process and rules they shared. Overall, it’s pretty simple:

First hour classes take a group photo of everyone who is participating in the spirit day

The class emails or shares the photo on social media with the staff by a certain time

Those photos and classes get put into a Google Form where a voting form is created

The voting form gets embedded onto the staff’s website

The page where the voting takes place is shared with the school via email, social media, flyers, etc.

Voting takes place until a certain time and a winner is declared

My staffs have chosen to provide donuts to the winning class each day but you could come up with your own reward from one winner at the end of the week to a bragging rights trophy that travels

Have a contest you do with your staff to engage your audience? Would love to hear about it and feature it here. Drop a comment below or email us at info@jeadigitalmedia.org.

Aaron Manfull

Aaron is in his 20th year of advising student media. He is currently the Director of Student Media at Francis Howell North High School in St. Charles, Missouri. He is the Journalism Education Association Digital Media Chair and co-Director of Media Now. He created The Next 26 and is a former Dow Jones News Fund National Journalism Teacher of the Year. He is one of the authors of the textbook "Student Journalism and Media Literacy." You can find him on Twitter and Instragram @manfull and on Snapchat as aaronmanfull. He's a proud father. A transplanted Iowan. And an avid Hawkeye Fan.